


Choices at Sixteen

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:48:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29752923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Naomi leaves home at 16... Blair goes to Rainier at 16...
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: SenThurs.belt





	Choices at Sixteen

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the SenTh prompt 'belt'

Choices at Sixteen...

by Bluewolf

Naomi was a few days past her sixteenth birthday when she left home.

She had met two girls a few weeks earlier, girls who lived in a hippie commune a few miles outside Fort Worth, and had found their description of the way they lived more impressive than the controlled existence she had with her parents. She was fond enough of them, but felt that they didn't want her to grow up.

She made her way to the commune, where her two acquaintances - she hesitated to think of them as 'friends' - greeted her cheerfully, and took her to the room that would be her home while she was there.

It didn't take her long to realize that while there were things about this new life that she liked, there were also things she didn't like.

Her parents had always said she wasn't yet old enough to have a boyfriend. There was nobody to tell her that in the commune, and she slept with several of the boys over a period of a month.

And then she discovered she was pregnant.

Her mother had given her no information on sex. And when she told her two acquaintances, she discovered that they had simply assumed she knew about taking precautions.

She thought about it for a day or two, then - without telling the boys she had slept with that one of them had left her pregnant, rightly guessing that none of them would care - she said goodbye to the girls who had introduced her to the hippie life and headed off, not quite sure where she was going, but knowing that she really couldn't go home. Although... she could claim to have been raped...

But she decided against that, and simply traveled around.

***

She had taken her savings with her when she left home, but soon found that she had to tighten her belt if the money was to last any length of time. She was willing to work, but knew that the number of jobs available for a pregnant teenager would be very limited.

Finally she made the decision that she had really known from the start was inevitable, and phoned home. It would be easier telling her parents over the phone that she was pregnant; and if they did react as badly as she feared they would, it would be easier just to hang up...

But circumstances had totally changed. Her father was dead, killed in an accident; her mother had been badly injured, and didn't expect to live for more than two or three more months.

Naomi took a deep breath and told her mother about the child she was expecting.

"You have to come home!" her mother said. "I want to meet my grandchild!"

So Naomi went home. She let her mother choose a name, although she knew that if the child was a boy, and if the name she chose was that of her dead husband, she would give the child a 'using' name once her mother was also dead.

But her mother looked at her and smiled. "When I was your age, I had a boyfriend whose name was non-gender specific. We spoke several times about getting married once we were old enough... but his parents moved away from here, and we lost touch. Naomi, I'd be very happy if you called your child 'Blair'."

***

Naomi's mother lived long enough to hold her grandson several times before her heart failed.

She left all her money to Naomi. It wasn't a huge fortune, but Naomi knew that as long as she continued to keep her belt reasonably tight, it would do her for a long time. Especially with the value of the house added to it. Naomi enjoyed traveling around, and once Blair was a year old, she resumed the peripatetic life that suited her so much better than a settled one.

She took Blair all over the world, home schooling him, and quickly finding that he loved reading and absorbed knowledge like a sponge.

And 'knowledge' wasn't just book learning; traveling around the way she did, she decided that a knowledge of martial arts would be a good defensive tactic - and Blair learned martial arts with her.

***

When Blair was sixteen he said he wanted to go to university to study anthropology.

Naomi wasn't really surprised; he had always shown a keen interest in the way of life of many of the countries they had visited over the years. And 'cutting loose' at sixteen was, after all, what she had done. And because he was a boy, there was no way he would become pregnant, as she had done. However, she did warn him that he should do nothing that might leave a girl pregnant.

He assured her that he wouldn't. What he didn't tell her, then or later, was that he was more drawn to men than to women.

So Blair went to Rainier; and Naomi carried on traveling around the world, footloose and fancy free.

Though she thought she had taught him to be as footloose as she was, she was quite surprised to discover that he actually preferred the settled life at Rainier. He was happy to travel for a few weeks in the summer, but when it was time to return to the university, he turned his back on the gypsy life without hesitation and with no regrets.

She sometimes wondered if he planned to live his entire life at Rainier... but then he linked up with a detective and ended up becoming a detective himself. It was, she considered, a terrible waste of his education... but yet what could she do but accept that that was what he wanted to do? And how could she be so hypocritical as refuse to accept that this was what he wanted when she had spent her entire life doing what she wanted.

And so she smiled as if she was completely happy with his choice... and moved on to get on with her life, as she was letting Blair get on with his.


End file.
